Consulting

SQL Server

The MVP Summit has been pretty interesting so far. Much of what has been covered is under NDA and I'm not going to be the first to break it. But I can tell you about the Summit itself. Microsoft has 1,300 MVP's staying in downtown Seattle. (And MANY of the MVP's look just like uber-geeks -- very easy to pick out in a crowd.) There are about 75 SQL Server MVP's present out of roughly 100 total. I've enjoyed attaching names to the faces from the newsgroups and various forums.

The first day we spent on campus. The SQL Server team gave us a series of presentations on the product. I was suprised to find myself most interested in how they build “Yukon” every day. They discussed the build process and how they test new builds. I always find software development on that scale fascinating. They had a pretty extensive discussion of upcoming releases and their schedule.

Today we were back at the convention center. All 1,300 attendees were in one room for a series of presentations by the executives. Ballmer presented but I wasn't feeling well so I spent the afternoon at the hotel. I was really looking forward to hearing him speak. The presentations that I did see weren't earth shattering. The new XP Media Edition does look amazingly cool though! I may have to get one of those!

Tomorrow we're back with the product group on campus for our last day. It's a series of breakout sessions on specific topics. We've gotten quite a bit of time with the product group. They all keep asking what they can do to make the product better. I just wish I had better answers for them. I just spend so much time doing the basic stuff: creating tables and putting data into them. It's been great to see Microsoft give back to the community. I really appreciate that they've taken the time to share the information that have. Thanks guys and gals!

Microsoft USA does not pay for airfare. However, apparently, the foreign offices have more money available (*) and often offer to pay (or at least subsidize) the airfare.

(*) As I understand it, foreign countries often have laws against taking money out of the country, which means that a company's subsidy in that country has tons of money sitting in a bank which they need to find ways of spending inside the country.